“Except the monsters that we have made deals with don’t leave a trail of bodies wherever they go. I can’t do that to the world,” Julie spoke softly. One of my teammates moved slowly behind me.
“So naïve, girl. Your father would be ashamed. He was such a practical man. He would make a deal with the devil for the right cause. Order your man to stop what he is doing or I release these wights. You don’t want to try to toss a grenade in here. There are thousands of gallons of fuel and vapor in these pipes. You would kill your whole team and the others as well.”
Julie shook her head. “No explosives. Okay, Jean. Let’s talk. But leave my parents out of it.”
“Fair enough.” The movement behind me stopped. The vampire continued, “Your team will go to the bridge, pull up the anchor and set course for the mainland. Then you will leave this ship.”
“How do you know we won’t walk out of here and just sink the ship?” Julie asked.
“Because I will keep you as a hostage. Your uncle is running this operation. He will do anything to protect you. I will let you go free when we run aground.”
Julie laughed coldly. “And I’m supposed to believe you? You would bite me as soon as the helicopter lifted off. Screw you, Jean.”
“Now, young one, please, I did not choose this path, but I am a survivor. I just want to live.”
“If you can call that living.”
“Do not be so quick to judge. You of all people must wonder about this life. It is marvelous. I fought the darkness for so many years. I did not know what I was missing. I can see everything, Julie. I can feel your pulse from here. I can feel the world. The heartbeat of the very world. It is ecstasy.” The vampire was beginning to wax poetic. I had to try something.
“Hey, Jean,” I interrupted. “The girl’s hardheaded. I’m willing to talk business.”
“Your standards are slipping. When did MHI start hiring gorillas?” the vampire asked wryly, glancing in my direction. His red eyes bored into me.
“Owen? What are you doing?”
“Shut up,” I snapped at her. “I don’t want to die here. You can keep the girl. I’ll go up and pull up the anchor and point this barge at Florida. Old man Earl isn’t going to want anything to happen to this chick. We will leave.”
“A sensible one. You must be new, yes?”
“Yeah, I’m just a mercenary. I’m just in this for the money,” I lied. Moisture dripped onto my helmet and rolled hotly down my spine.
“Ahh, good.” The vampire steepled his fingers.
“Now you said you had some valuable information. Just what are we talking about, Frenchy? Valuable means something that I can use.” I had no idea if vampires were good judges of character.
“I can tell you about the six old ones, and their leader. They are on your country’s soil now.”
“And what about the Cursed One?” I ordered.
The four wights shrieked in chorus. Darné cringed.
“How do you know of Lord Machado?” The vampire hissed the name.
“Me and him are old pals. Now if you want the girl, I want to know what he’s here for.”
“Very well then. But it is your doom. Lord Machado has the artifact. He will take it to a Place of Power and he will use it. You cannot stop him. No mortal can stop him.”
“Look, Jean, I don’t want to stop him. I just want to make sure I end up on the winning team. Know what I mean?”
The vampire smiled. “I can help you then. You do not want to be on the wrong side when Lord Machado rules. Do we have a deal?”
Julie interrupted angrily. “Owen? What the hell are you thinking? No deals with vampires; he’ll kill me as soon as you walk out the door.”
“Shut up, bitch!” I snarled. I move very fast for a big man. In the next second, I dropped my shotgun, letting the sling catch it. I lifted my right hand as if I was going to backhand her. Julie’s eyes widened in shocked surprise. The vampire’s eyes followed my uplifted hand, as my left hand lifted a grenade off of my webbing. I brought my hands together smoothly. Instead of throwing my fist, I stuck my finger through the safety pin and pulled. The sound of the pin landing on the steaming floor was exceedingly loud.
“Run, Julie. Run now.” I held the live grenade up next to my face. The only thing keeping the grenade from exploding was the thin spring-loaded metal spoon that I was holding down with one finger. If I relaxed my grip the fuse would ignite. Five seconds later it would explode, and possibly ignite the engine room in a massive explosion. Julie did not say anything. She nodded and then retreated. The rest of the team followed quickly. I shouted one final instruction: “Get ready to abandon ship!”
“You idiot!” the vampire roared. The wights hissed and thrashed in unison. “You will destroy us all!”
“Better my way than yours, you snail-eating bastard.” I started slowly backing away. The wights exploded from the room and spread out in a skirmish line, snapping and clawing at the air. Jean Darné stepped through the portal and strode forward. In the residual steam and in the red emergency lights he looked like the traditional versions of the devil. So this must be hell.
“Give me the grenade,” he ordered. Darné locked his eyes on mine. Shivers ran down my spine, though the room temperature was running around a hundred and thirty degrees.
“Oh, I’ll give it to you all right.”
“I compel you. Hand me the grenade, safely.” The red eyes bored into mine. The words repeated themselves in my conscious mind, and burrowed into my subconscious like tendrils. I felt myself starting to comply. The wights began to inch closer. My vision began to darken.
“NO!” I shouted, shaking my head wildly. The wights shrank back.
“You have a strong will, ape man, but it won’t do you any good. Give me that grenade. You do not want to die.”
“Neither do you! Stay back!” I waved the grenade in front of me. A pound of high explosives was my holy symbol.
“Maybe I should just take it. I am greater than you can understand. The greater the creator, the greater the creation. My creator was the greatest of them all.” Darné’s devil visage continued to advance.
“If you think you’re fast enough, come and get it.” I backed into something solid, the escape ladder leading to the cargo bay, forty feet of iron rungs standing in the middle of the crowded room between me and safety. I knew that Darné would never let me make it to the corridor.
“You are not leaving me with any choice, human,” the vampire hissed. He stopped, less than ten feet away. His wights stopped alongside of him, two on each side. There was about a yard between each of the creatures. An image of black steel plates popped unbidden into my mind.
It had to be fate.
I kept my left arm extended with the grenade. I reached down with my right and grasped the stock of my shotgun. I had fired this gun hundreds and thousands of times, practiced until my fingers had bled and my shoulder formed thick recoil calluses. My father, the ruthless perfectionist, had driven me hard when it came to shooting, because he sensed that I had a gift and would not settle for anything less than perfection in his sons. The wood was worn smooth under my glove. The Remington glistened darkly with moisture from the steam. I brought the butt into contact with my shoulder. My life came down to this instant. I needed to beat my record.
“Catch!” I tossed the grenade to Darné. The spoon released with a metallic sproing, igniting the fuse. The vampire moved as a blur to snatch the grenade out of the air. The wights mindlessly tracked the moving object. For me, time ceased. The gun and I were one seamless melding of man and machine. The safety was released as my finger knowingly sought the trigger. The muzzle rose perfectly. The trigger was pulled. The sear released. The hammer fell. The firing pin struck the primer. The powder burned.
I was bringing the muzzle onto the second wight’s head before the buckshot struck the first. Fire. Work the action. Repeat. Five shots. Faster than I had ever gone before. The fusillade was a continuous roar without pause. I did no
t miss any of the five undead craniums.
Dropping the shotgun onto its sling, I grabbed the ladder and started to climb as fast as I humanly could. I did not wait to watch for results. I heard thuds as some of the wights fell to their backs, or collapsed to their knees.
Darné had been a Monster Hunter for longer than I had been alive. He knew what to do with live ordnance in a bad place. He had caught, and then immediately launched the grenade with a pitch that would have made any major league pitcher proud, right through the doorway and into the corridor. He did that even as my silver buckshot pellets penetrated his skull.
The grenade hit the corridor wall and rolled away, now belching orange signal smoke. It was a harmless smoke grenade.
Darné screamed as the silver burned him. “Kill him! KILL HIM!”
Two of the wights shrugged off their shattered skulls and damaged brain tissues, leapt to their feet and charged. The first began to climb after me as the second jumped onto one of the engines and began to climb up the metal surface like a spider. One wight had its eyes put out and stumbled blindly for the ladder, searching for me by smell. The last had its spinal cord severed and was flopping wildly as random impulses fired from its undead brain. I climbed as fast as I could, legs pumping, arms grasping and pulling with all of the desperate strength I could muster. The wights were far faster.
I was halfway up the ladder when the first wight clawed at my boot. Grabbing the shotgun, I fired a single round straight down between my feet. The creature’s hand exploded on impact and it fell toward the ground. The blind wight quickly took its place, scurrying after me. The wall crawler matched my pace, and launched itself at the ladder. There was barely time to swing around to the other side as it crashed into the slick steel bars. I dangled over the floor as it wildly tore at me. One paralyzing touch and I was dead. I swung the shotgun like a club, smashing the wight in the face. It tore my weapon away, ripping through the sling as it fell to the deck. I slipped on a wet rung, and then forced myself to start climbing again.
Darné caught my Remington in one hand. He expertly pumped the weapon, aimed it at me and fired. The buckshot slammed into my armored chest, knocking me back. I grunted in pain, but the silver pellets stopped against the woven Kevlar. My gloves slipped on the wet steel, and I toppled backwards in flailing panic. My knee wrenched painfully as I crashed upside-down into the ladder. I hung suspended, my boot wedged under one rung, and my knee bent over the top of another, like an insane trapeze artist. The blood rushed to my head, and I watched as Darné pumped the shotgun, aimed it right between my eyes and pulled the trigger.
Nothing. The click was the loudest sound in the world. That had been my seven shots.
The blind wight surged upwards, sensing my warm blood. Still facing down, I swung my fist and shattered its undead face. The creature was knocked aside and fell. Instantly my hand went numb, and coldness rippled up my arm. I grunted as I did an upside-down sit-up, grabbed the rung above me with my left hand, and pulled. My right arm hanging limply and my knee throbbing in pain, I kept pulling myself along; push up one rung, lean in, reach up for the next one, repeat. My shotgun shattered as it ricocheted spectacularly off of the rail next to my head. Darné had a good arm.
“That was my favorite gun!” I bellowed as I kept inching nearer to the hatch. I now had a wight on the ladder below, rapidly gaining, and two more scaling the wall to pounce on me. The hatch was still ten feet away.
“You should have taken my offer,” the vampire roared.
He jumped impossibly high and landed on the ladder directly below me. The metal shook under the impact. Hot water droplets flew off and struck me in the face. Three wights and a vampire in striking distance in the next few seconds. I just kept climbing because that was my only option. I was pretty much screwed.
Then the hatch opened, directly above my head. It was my savior.
It was Grant Jefferson.
“Grant! Help me!” I screamed, clawing my way toward him.
His eyes grew wide as he saw the undead creatures swarming upwards. He started to hold out his hand to me, and then he apparently decided that he did not have time before the creatures would be on him as well. I could see the fear register on his face as he did the math. They were too close. Grant stood in his polished black body armor, bristling with useful weaponry, and said two words: “Sorry, Pitt.” He looked right at me as he slammed the hatch.
“Arrgghhhh!” I shouted unintelligibly. Darné laughed below. I stuck one of my legs through the ladder to lock myself into position as well as possible. I reached across my body and drew my pistol with my left hand, sighted on the closest wight spider-crawling upward, and shot it in the head four times before it slipped from the wall and fell thirty-five feet onto its back with a bone-jarring crunch. The other wall-crawler leapt, and I just barely had time to align the front sight on the monster before impact, firing a silver slug through the monster’s brain. The wight’s momentum carried it forward where it struck one of my legs. It fell away screaming in rage. Darné easily avoided the falling undead, but the blind wight underneath was not so lucky. The two monsters collided and fell the rest of the way to the hard metal floor. This time they did not rise. My now-numb leg buckled, and I only barely held on.
Now it was just me and Darné. He flew up the ladder. I fired the remaining ten rounds as fast as I could pull the trigger. I hit him repeatedly but with almost no effect. I dropped the pistol, and he swatted it out of the air. I watched hopelessly as it flew into multiple pieces. I grasped wildly for my knife, but it was too late. He was beside me on the ladder.
His clawed hand clamped around my throat like an iron vise, choking off my air. A bullet hole in his forehead closed and squeezed out a mushroomed .45 slug like some disastrous pimple. I learned a few things right then. Vampires did not breathe, and I was in fact still afraid of dying. I was surprised that I was thinking about Julie. I just hoped that she made it.
“Tell me just one thing, you poor brave idiot,” the vampire ordered as he shook me. “How did you know about Lord Machado? How?”
“I went to France once,” I gasped.
“And what does that have to do with anything?” Darné asked, fangs extending as he prepared to feed on me. I wondered if I had the strength to break free long enough to fall to my death. It beat the alternative.
“My family went there to see where one of my grandpas was buried. He died on Utah Beach.”
“How touching. Now, if you tell me how you learned about Lord Machado, I’ll make your death painless.”
“I learned that the people in the countryside were pretty nice. But the people in Paris were a bunch of stuck-up, self-righteous pricks. I’m guessing you’re from Paris.”
“Idiot.” Darné’s jaw distended as his mouth opened like an anaconda about to eat a goat.
“Darné!” a voice shouted from below. It was Earl Harbinger. He strode into the engine room through the swirling orange smoke.
The vampire’s mouth slowly closed. “Hello, Earl. It has been a while.”
“Come down here and face me. You know you’re not going to get out of here alive. MHI controls the whole freighter. Your goons are all staked. It’s over.”
“I have your man as a hostage. Let me go, or I kill him,” the vampire hissed.
“You know the rules. You helped write them. Let him go and come down here and fight me. You know you’ve wanted to prove something for a long time. Let’s go. Either way you’re going to die. At least this way you get the satisfaction of seeing if I am as good as they say.”
“And what if I just kill this piece of merde?” He squeezed so hard that the vertebrae in my neck popped. I cringed in pain, and involuntary tears rolled from my eyes.
“Then I’ll have my men at the hatch above you throw down buckets of holy water. I’ll just stake you while you’re laying on the ground and sizzling. Or even better, I’ll tie you up and drag you into the sun. You’ve seen it. You know how much that has to hurt. I swear th
at if you kill that Hunter then I’ll drag you out of here and nail you to the superstructure and watch you burn. I figure you can probably go a while before you finally quit kicking.” Harbinger unbuckled his armor straps and set his weapon harness on the deck. “Just you and me, Darné. One last go-round.”
“How do I know you don’t have ten Hunters waiting in the hall?”
“You don’t. But you know my reputation.”
“I do. Fine, Earl. Let us see who the best Hunter really is.” The vampire released me and I dropped, barely managing to grab a rail. Darné let go and fell swiftly to the floor, landing as if it was nothing.
The two combatants squared off in the red light and steam. I watched in amazement as Harbinger began to circle. He was just a normal man, maybe two thirds of my weight, and in training he had never given any indication of having any sort of special fighting skills. On the other hand, I had just watched Darné perform several superhuman feats and smash my pistol into bits with his bare hands. This did not look good for Harbinger.
The hatch creaked open above me. Strong hands reached through and grasped the handles of my armor. The smell of Copenhagen told me that it was Sam Haven. He hung upside-down through the hatch and scanned the room. He saw Harbinger and Darné preparing to fight.
“Oh hell. We’ve got to get out of here!” Sam blurted. He tugged on me and grunted. “Help me, you hare-lipped derelict! You’re too damn heavy.”
“What about Harbinger?” I asked in a panic.
“Don’t worry about Earl. He’ll be fine. You don’t want to be around him when he gets into one of his moods. Now move, damn it!” I struggled up the ladder with Sam pulling me. More hands grasped my arms and helped. Chuck Mead was there as well. The two burly men pulled me into the cargo bay. Sam threw the hatch down and spun the wheel to seal it behind us.
The cargo bay was much cooler. The steel of the floor was cold under my face. I lay there for a minute, panting, as the feeling painfully returned to my arm and leg. I could not understand what had just happened. Earl Harbinger had just given up his life for mine. I was sure that Darné was tearing him to pieces as we sat here uselessly. I gradually pulled myself to a sitting position, my back resting against a sheet-metal shipping container, my stomach clenched in agony, and my knee twinged as I moved it.